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News and Views from the Global SouthFri, 13 Sep 2019 21:17:01 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.10Producing Energy from Pig and Poultry Waste in Brazilhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/producing-energy-pig-poultry-waste-brazil/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=producing-energy-pig-poultry-waste-brazil
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/producing-energy-pig-poultry-waste-brazil/#respondFri, 16 Aug 2019 04:13:49 +0000Mario Osavahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162871Romário Schaefer is fattening up 3,300 pigs that he receives when they weigh around 22 kg and returns when they reach 130 to 160 kg – a huge increase in meat and profits for their owner, a local meat-processing plant in this city in Brazil. Schaefer is not interested in the pork meat business. What […]

Romário Schaefer, 65, stands between the biodigester buried in the ground on the right and the blue tank holding whey that is mixed with the manure of the pigs he fattens in a row of pig pens (top left) to produce biogas, in the southern Brazilian municipality of Entre Rios do Oeste. In the background is his brick factory, which saves about 6,500 dollars a month in electricity by using biogas. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario OsavaENTRE RIOS DO OESTE, Brazil, Aug 16 2019 (IPS)

Romário Schaefer is fattening up 3,300 pigs that he receives when they weigh around 22 kg and returns when they reach 130 to 160 kg – a huge increase in meat and profits for their owner, a local meat-processing plant in this city in Brazil.

Schaefer is not interested in the pork meat business. What he wants is the manure, which he uses to produce biogas and electricity that fuel his brick-making factory.

“I’m not a farmer,” he says as he shows us around his Stein Ceramics company in the middle of a 38-hectare rural property on the outskirts of Entre Rios do Oeste, a farming town of 4,400 people in western Paraná, one of three states in Brazil’s southern region, on the border with Paraguay.

He is explaining the difference between himself and neighbouring pig farmers who produce biogas and sell it to the Mini-Thermoelectric Plant inaugurated on Jul. 24 to generate energy that serves the Entre Rios municipal government and all of its facilities in the town itself and the rest of the municipality.

For them it is a new agricultural product, and has been recognised as such in Paraná for commercial and tax purposes. But for Schaefer it’s an input for his factory, which makes bricks.

Animal waste, which pollutes the soil and rivers, is becoming an important by-product in southwestern Brazil, where pig and poultry farming has expanded widely in recent decades.

The Haacke farm, in the municipality of Santa Helena, south of Entre Rios, uses the waste produced by its tens of thousands of hens and hundreds of cattle to produce biogas, electricity and biomethane.

Its biomethane, a fuel derived from the refining of biogas which is employed as a substitute for natural gas, is used in vehicles at the giant Itaipú hydroelectric plant shared by Brazil and Paraguay on the Paraná River, which forms part of the border between the two countries.

In Mariscal Cándido Rondon, a few kilometres to the north, the Kohler family, pioneers in the use of biogas on their large farm, took on another role in the chain of this energy which is more than just clean – it actually cleans the environment.

Part of Stein Ceramics, whose prosperity and ecological production were made possible by the biogas produced from the manure of 3,300 pigs. The factory produces enough bricks monthly to build 200 60-square-metre homes in the state of Paraná, on Brazil’s border with Paraguay. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

They created a biodigester company, BioKohler, which is present in many projects spreading throughout Paraná and other Brazilian states, not only selling equipment but also sharing know-how brought from other countries.

The new family initiative that can guide new projects is a biogas-fired power plant with an installed capacity of 75 kilowatts, built on the farm in partnership with the German company Mele, with many “tropicalised” technological innovations.

“Such a unit is only viable above 150 kilowatts of power, a scale that allows the cost of the investment to be recovered,” Pedro Kohler, who leads the family’s industrial branch, told IPS.

Schaefer looks at the question from the angle of the consumer who generates his own energy. “Without biogas my factory would not be viable, I would not be able to compete and survive in the market,” he said.

In recent years, many ceramic products factories, including brick-makers, went bankrupt in Brazil, something that also happened in the west of the state of Paraná, after the national economic recession of 2015 and 2016, which especially affected the construction industry and aggravated the rise in energy costs.

The pig fattening contract with the slaughterhouse allowed him to avoid bankruptcy, the businessman said.

Pedro Kohler, who heads a biodigester company in the western Brazilian state of Paraná, stands between a biodigester and deposits of biogas and biofertilisers from the thermoelectric plant he installed on his family’s farm in the municipality of Cándido Rondon. Innovative technologies and equipment, provided by their German partner Mele, will modernise the biogas sector in Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

“The meat-packing plant supplies everything: food, medicine and technical assistance. What I provide is the installations and the workforce; a couple of workers is enough because everything is automatic, and I keep the manure,” he told IPS on his rural property.

That makes it possible for him to deposit 1.8 million litres of pig waste in the biodigester, a large closed ball of black canvas, half buried in a pit measuring about 10 metres in diameter, where it ferments thanks to anaerobic bacteria.

The biodigester is the source of the biogas that feeds a generator which produces 23,000 megawatts/hour per month, enough to save 25,000 reais (6,500 dollars at the current exchange rate) – almost half of his electricity bill.

Actually, his mini-plant operates only four to five hours a day. It does so during peak evening consumption hours, when the electricity supplied by the distribution company is most expensive.

In the next few months, Schaefer hopes to put an additional 2,000 piglets in his fattening shed, where he is building new pigsties. He would thus expand biogas production, both to generate more electricity and to feed the kilns, replacing the burning of briquettes and wood waste.

The businessman has 19 years of experience with biogas, initially focused on burning it as a substitute for firewood, which was scarce, and on preventing pollution. As he explains, he proudly points to his “smokeless” fireplace.

In 2013, rising costs forced him to expand the biodigester and install the electric generator.

He also had to automate his factory to survive. “In the past we employed up to 90 workers, today there are only 20 and production has risen threefold,” he said.

Long sheds where thousands of pigs are fattened are becoming a familiar part of the landscape in rural areas of Entre Rios del Oeste, in southwestern Brazil, where a Mini Thermoelectric Plant was inaugurated on Jul. 24. The plant runs on biogas produced by a network of 18 pig farms and supplies the city government facilities. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Behind the progress made was great persistence, the ironing out of numerous problems and third party assistance. Sometimes he almost gave up, he confessed. Some solutions came to him by chance, like the biodigestion mixer recommended by a German embassy official, during a visit to his company.

Similarly, he learned about the advantages of incorporating waste whey into cheese production. This offers the dairy industry a sure way to dispose of it, while preventing pollution.

Founded in 2013 as a non-profit association of 27 national, local and international institutions, CIBIogas has a specialised laboratory and implemented 11 biogas projects on farms and in agribusiness enterprises.

It is an energy source with varied uses and inputs that requires a lengthy learning process and depends on business models and markets that have yet to be defined and are not yet consolidated, said Rafael González, director of Technological Development at CIBiogás.

Each project has its unique characteristics. Changes in animal feed, which primarily seek to improve the production of meat or eggs, for example, can negatively affect the production of biogas.

There are also differences between animal manures, said Daiana Martinez, information analyst at CIBiogas. Cattle manure, for example, is more productive, but contains a high level of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) that causes corrosion, requiring more refining.

González said biomethane is the fuel currently used by 82 Itaipu cars and has already been approved in tests with tractors, buses and other large vehicles. It is best to produce it from bird droppings, which facilitate the removal of hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide, he explained.

Biogas can meet up to 36 percent of the electricity consumption of this South American country, which is the size of a continent and is home to 210 million people, CIBiogas estimates.

This potential is basically divided between agricultural waste, which includes livestock and sugarcane vinasse, and urban waste, including sewage and garbage dumps.

In addition to avoiding pollution and the emission of greenhouse gases, biogas has been shown by local experience to promote local development, through energy projects and a chain of businesses, such as equipment industries, services and productive arrangements, González said.

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]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/producing-energy-pig-poultry-waste-brazil/feed/0Mexican Women Use Sunlight Instead of Firewood or Gas to Cook Mealshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/mexican-women-use-sunlight-instead-firewood-gas-cook-meals/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mexican-women-use-sunlight-instead-firewood-gas-cook-meals
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/mexican-women-use-sunlight-instead-firewood-gas-cook-meals/#respondTue, 13 Aug 2019 21:56:35 +0000Emilio Godoyhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162852Reyna Díaz cooks beans, chicken, pork and desserts in her solar cooker, which she sets up in the open courtyard of her home in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of this town in southwestern Mexico. “My family likes the way it cooks things. I use it almost every day, it has been a big […]

Reyna Díaz checks the marinated pork she is cooking in a solar cooker at her home in a poor neighbourhood of Vicente Guerrero, Villa de Zaachila municipality, in the southwestern Mexican state of Oaxaca. The use of solar cookers has made is possible for 200 local women to save on fuel and stop using firewood, providing environmental and health benefits. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio GodoyVILLA DE ZAACHILA, Mexico, Aug 13 2019 (IPS)

Reyna Díaz cooks beans, chicken, pork and desserts in her solar cooker, which she sets up in the open courtyard of her home in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of this town in southwestern Mexico.

“My family likes the way it cooks things. I use it almost every day, it has been a big help to me,” Díaz told IPS as she mixed the ingredients for cochinita pibil, a traditional pork dish marinated with spices and achiote, a natural coloring.

She then placed the pot on the aluminum sheets of the cooker, which reflect the sunlight that heats the receptacle.

Before receiving the solar cooker in March, Díaz, who sells atole, a traditional hot Mexican drink based on corn or wheat dough, and is raising her son and daughter on her own, did not believe it was possible to cook with the sun’s rays."I learned while working with the local women. It was hard, like breaking stones; people knew nothing about it. Now people are more open, because there is more information about the potential of solar energy. In rural areas, people understand it more." -- Lorena Harp

“I didn’t know it could be done, I wondered if the food would actually be cooked. It’s a wonderful thing,” said this resident of the poor neighbourhood of Vicente Guerrero, in Villa de Zaachila, a municipality of 43,000 people in the state of Oaxaca, some 475 km south of Mexico City.

One thing the inhabitants of Vicente Guerrero have in common is poverty. But although they live in modest houses that in some cases are tin shacks lining unpaved streets and have no sewage system, they do have electricity and drinking water. The women alternate their informal sector jobs with the care of their families.

Diaz used to cook with firewood and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), which she now uses less so it lasts longer. “I’ve saved a lot,” she said.

Women in this neighborhood were taught how to use the solar cookers and then became
promoters, organising demonstrations in their homes to exchange recipes, taste their dishes and spread the word about the benefits and positive changes that the innovative stoves have brought.

The solar cookers are low-tech devices that use reflective panels to focus sunlight on a pot in the middle.

Their advantages include being an alternative for rural cooking, because they make it possible to cook without electricity or solid or fossil fuels, pasteurising water to make it drinkable, reducing logging and pollution, helping people avoid breathing smoke from woodstoves, and using renewable energy.

The drawbacks are that they do not work on rainy or cloudy days, it takes a long time to cook the food, compared to traditional stoves, and they have to be used outdoors.

In Mexico, a country of 130 million people, some 19 million use solid fuels for cooking, which caused some 15,000 premature deaths in 2016 from the ingestion of harmful particles, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi).

Lorena Harp (L), head of a project that promotes the use of solar cookers in Mexico, shows retired teacher Irma Jiménez how to assemble the device, in the poor neighborhood of Vicente Guerrero, Villa de Zaachila municipality, in the southwestern state of Oaxaca. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

The main fuel consumed by 79 percent of these households is LPG, followed by wood or charcoal (11 percent) and natural gas (seven percent).

In Oaxaca, gas and firewood each account for 49 percent of household consumption.

Of the state’s more than four million inhabitants, 70 percent were living in poverty in 2016 and nearly 27 percent in extreme poverty, according to Inegi. Twenty-six percent lived in substandard, crowded housing and 62 percent lacked access to basic services.

Oaxaca is also one of the three Mexican states with the highest levels of energy poverty, which means households that spend more than 10 percent of their income on energy.

Solar cookers can help combat the deprivation.

They first began to be distributed in Oaxaca in 2004. In 2008, activists created the initiative “Solar energy for mobile food stalls in Mexico”, sponsored by three Swiss institutions: the city of Geneva, the SolarSpar cooperative and the non-governmental organisation GloboSol.

Cocina Solar Mexico, a collective dedicated to the use of solar energy for cooking, was founded in 2009. With the support of the non-governmental Solar Household Energy (SHE), based in Washington, an economical, light-weight prototype was built.

In 2016, SHE launched a pilot project in indigenous communities to assess how widely it would be accepted.

“I learned while working with the local women. It was hard, like breaking stones; people knew nothing about it. Now people are more open, because there is more information about the potential of solar energy. In rural areas, people understand it more,” Lorena Harp, head of the initiative, told IPS.

The four-litre pot, which has a useful life of five to 10 years, costs about $25, of which SHE provides half. The group has distributed about 200 solar cookers in 10 communities.

Harp said it is a gender issue, because “women are empowered, they have gained respect in their families.”

The southwestern Mexican state of Oaxaca fails to take advantage of is great solar power potential. The picture shows a rooftop at a solar panel factory in Oaxaca City, the state capital. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Despite its potential, Oaxaca does not take advantage of its high levels of solar radiation. Last June, it was listed among the 10 Mexican states with the lowest levels of distributed (decentralised) generation, less than 500 kilowatts, connected to the national power grid, according to the government’s Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE).

In the first half of the year, Oaxaca had an installed photovoltaic capacity of 6.69 megawatts with 747 interconnection contracts, in a country where distributed generation only involves solar energy.

This Latin American country registered 17,767 contracts for almost 125 megawatts (MW), almost the same volume as in the same period in 2018 -when they totaled 35,661 for 233.56 MW, although there were more permits. Since 2007, CRE has registered 112,660 contracts for 817.85 MW of solar power.

But “there is a lack of precise, reliable information and certainty about the savings achieved with distributed generation, which is generated for self-consumption while the surplus is fed into the grid. In addition, there is no policy in the state,” Calderón, also a member of the National Solar Energy Association, told IPS.

But the government of left-wing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who took office in December, is driving the exploitation of fossil fuels and standing in the way of the growth of renewable energies.

It plans to modify the Business Ecocredit initiative, led by the government’s Electric Energy Saving Trust for micro, small and medium enterprises for the acquisition of efficient appliances. The measures include eliminating the 14 percent subsidy and a limit of some 20,000 dollars in financing, but the government has yet to define its future.

In addition, the Oaxaca government’s plan to create two cooperatives for energy for agricultural irrigation does not yet have the 1.75 million dollars needed for two 500-kilowatt solar plants in the municipality of San Pablo Huixtepec to serve 1,200 farmers in 35 irrigation units.

The local women don’t plan to stop using the solar cookers, in a neighbourhood ideal for deploying solar panels and water heaters. “We’re going to keep using it, we’ve seen that it works. We’re going to promote this,” Díaz said, while checking that her stew wasn’g burning.

The SHE assessment found that the solar cookers were widely accepted and have had a positive impact, as nearly half of the local women who use them have reduced by more than 50 percent their use of stoves that cause pollution. Some use the pots up to six times a week, and they have proven to be high quality, durable and affordable. Users also report that the solar cookers have saved them time.

Harp said more partners and government support were needed. “There’s still a long way to go, there are many shortfalls. Something is missing to generate truly widespread use, perhaps a comprehensive policy,” she said.

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]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/08/mexican-women-use-sunlight-instead-firewood-gas-cook-meals/feed/0Solar Collectors and Solidarity Change Lives in Argentinahttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/solar-collectors-solidarity-change-lives-argentina/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=solar-collectors-solidarity-change-lives-argentina
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/solar-collectors-solidarity-change-lives-argentina/#respondMon, 08 Jul 2019 08:13:56 +0000Daniel Gutmanhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162309“This is the best thing ever invented for the poor,” says Emanuel del Monte, pointing to a tank covered in black tarps protruding from the roof of his house. It forms part of a system built mostly from waste materials, which heats water through solar energy and is improving lives in Argentina. Thanks to him, […]

Volunteers install a solar water heater, made from recycled materials, with a 90-litre tank on the roof of a modest home in the Argentine municipality of Pilar, 50 km north of Buenos Aires. This unique thermal generation system was designed by Brazilian engineer José Alano, who did not patent it in order to facilitate its free use. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel GutmanPILAR, Argentina, Jul 8 2019 (IPS)

“This is the best thing ever invented for the poor,” says Emanuel del Monte, pointing to a tank covered in black tarps protruding from the roof of his house. It forms part of a system built mostly from waste materials, which heats water through solar energy and is improving lives in Argentina.

Thanks to him, hundreds of families in three poor neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the Argentine capital now have hot water for bathing. They used to heat water in pots but had abandoned the practice in recent years because of the high costs of cooking gas.

Del Monte, 32, his wife and five children live in an unpainted cinder-block house with a half-built brick perimeter wall in the neighborhood of Pinazo, Pilar municipality, about 50 km north of Buenos Aires."When they first tell you about it, you don't understand what they're talking about. Then you realize it's an opportunity you can't miss out on because it changes your life.” – Verónica González

Pinazo is a community of about 5,000 people that reflects the social deterioration in the 24 municipalities surrounding Buenos Aires, which together with the capital account for more than 13 million of the country’s 44 million inhabitants.

Neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the capital are home to 130,000 of the 200,000 people who lost their jobs in 2018 in this South American country, where the economy is in a deep crisis and poverty has climbed to 36 percent of the population, according to official figures.

The paved streets of Pinazo are lined with houses with roof tiles and gardens, run-down but clearly middle-class.

But if you turn down the dirt side streets, many of the homes are shacks made of boards, corrugated metal and even pieces of tarp, between empty dirt lots where cats, dogs and chickens wander about.

On some Saturdays, however, things get busy on several of the empty lots: dozens of volunteers, mostly young people, work for hours building solar heaters, together with many local residents.

The volunteers gather early on one side of the freeway from Buenos Aires and come to the neighbourhood together, in cars and trucks loaded with huge bags full of plastic bottles, cans, cardboard boxes, old mattresses and tarps.

Mariana Alio and her husband, Emanuel del Monte, stand in front of their house in Pinazo, a poor neighbourhood in the municipality of Pilar, in Greater Buenos Aires. On the roof they have a solar water heater, covered with mattresses and tarps that keep it warm, which provides them with hot water for bathing – a luxury their family had to do without because of the high cost of the cooking gas they used to heat water in pots. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

In addition, local residents at the site gather useful waste products, which they used to burn or throw into the polluted stream that gives its name to the neighborhood, since there is no garbage collection system.

Convened by the non-governmental organisation Sumando Energías, the volunteers say their goodbyes just before sunset, after building and installing on the roofs of up to four houses solar energy collectors and 90-litre thermal tanks, which keep the water warm because they are covered with mattresses and tarps.

“Each collector is made with 264 plastic bottles, 180 cans and 110 cardboard boxes. Most of the materials we use are reused,” Pablo Castaño, 32, who founded Sumando Energías in 2014, tells IPS as he walks around, supervising the work of the volunteers.

“I am convinced that sustainability is the only way to improve things for the poor. Social and economic solutions go hand in hand with environmental solutions,” says Castaño.

The head of Sumando Energías says he came into contact with the conditions in low-income areas while volunteering for another NGO, Techo (Roofs), dedicated to providing decent housing in slums, and became interested in renewable energy while studying to become an industrial engineer.

Castaño was born and raised in the southern province of Río Negro, near Vaca Muerta, the giant unconventional oil and gas field that the government is counting on to give a boost to Argentina’s declining economy. But he argues that “it is not the burning of fossil fuels that is going to save us.”

The solar collectors consist of 12 parallel two-metre-long PVC tubes covered with cans that absorb heat from the sun and heat the water inside the pipe. They are then wrapped in plastic bottles and cardboard.

Young volunteers from Sumando Energías build solar collectors in the Pinazo neighborhood. The NGO trains them in the development of clean energies that provide social, environmental and economic solutions in poor neighbourhoods in Argentina. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

“That’s how we generate the greenhouse effect that keeps the temperature up. The next step is to set up a closed circuit between the pipes and the tank, which is placed on top, as hot water becomes dense and tends to rise. After about 60 round-trip cycles, the water is hot, between 40 and 65 degrees (Celsius),” says Lucía López Alonso, one of the volunteers.

“What is generated is not electricity, but solar thermal energy,” she tells IPS.

Emanuel del Monte’s wife, Mariana Alio, who works at a greengrocer’s, says their family used to heat up water in pots using cooking gas, for bathing, but economic difficulties forced them to only use gas for cooking.

“Some people in the neighbourhood still think I’m crazy when I tell them that I now have hot water from a system built using waste products,” says Del Monte, who recently lost his job as a maintenance worker in Escobar, a municipality near Pilar, and today does odd jobs, mowing lawns or as a handyman.

In both Pilar and Escobar, slums exist side by side with summer homes and gated communities – some of them wealthy and all of them surrounded by walls and fences and protected by private security guards – where slum-dwellers can find casual work.

“(José) Alano didn’t patent it in order for his design to be used freely. We also follow his philosophy and uploaded the solar collector manual to our Facebook page, so anyone can access it,” Castaño explains.

In four years, Sumando Energías has built and installed 174 solar collectors in neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

In the poor neighbourhood of Pinazo, on the outskirts of the Argentine capital, young volunteers cover a 90-litre thermal tank with a layer of foam recycled from old mattresses, which helps keep water heated by a solar collector – also made with old plastic bottles and cans – warm. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Castaño explains that the system for making solar collectors with reused materials was designed in 2002 in Brazil by retired mechanic José Alano, who promoted it in the south of his country.

The activist says the units have a useful life of 10 years or more, but points out that they last longer because they do not have mechanical parts. In addition, the plastic bottles can be easily replaced when they eventually darken and no longer perform their function of maintaining heat.

The aim of the initiative is not only to provide a solution for poor families but also to pass on know-how about renewable energy to the volunteers, who donate 1,500 pesos (about 33 dollars), which are used to cover the cost of the materials.

“We also receive some donations from companies, but we don’t accept any from companies linked to the fossil fuel business,” says Castaño.

Sumando Energías is now working on prototypes of solar cookers that will allow families like those living in the Pinazo neighbourhood, most of whom depend on the informal labour market, to cut their dependence on cooking gas cylinders, which cost 10 dollars to refill.

“Many of us here have had 25-litre electric water heaters, but they tend to burn out because the electric power source is unreliable,” says Verónica González, a 34-year-old local resident who lives with her mother, three daughters and a niece, as she cuts plastic bottles alongside the volunteers.

Her family is among the latest to benefit from the solar heaters designed by Alano. “When they first tell you about it, you don’t understand what they’re talking about. Then you realize it’s an opportunity you can’t miss out on because it changes your life,” she tells IPS.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/solar-collectors-solidarity-change-lives-argentina/feed/0Chilean Schools Recycle Greywater to Combat Droughthttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/chilean-schools-recycle-greywater-combat-drought/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=chilean-schools-recycle-greywater-combat-drought
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/chilean-schools-recycle-greywater-combat-drought/#respondThu, 04 Jul 2019 05:11:16 +0000Orlando Milesihttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=162283Children from the neighboring municipalities of Ovalle and Río Hurtado in northern Chile are harvesting rain and recycling greywater in their schools to irrigate fruit trees and vegetable gardens, in an initiative aimed at combating the shortage of water in this semi-arid region. And other youngsters who are completing their education at a local polytechnic […]

The principal of the Samo Alto rural school, Omar Santander, shows organic tomatoes in the greenhouse built by teachers, students and their families, who raise the crops irrigated with rainwater or recycled water in Coquimbo, a region of northern Chile where rainfall is scarce. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando MilesiOVALLE, Chile, Jul 4 2019 (IPS)

Children from the neighboring municipalities of Ovalle and Río Hurtado in northern Chile are harvesting rain and recycling greywater in their schools to irrigate fruit trees and vegetable gardens, in an initiative aimed at combating the shortage of water in this semi-arid region.

And other youngsters who are completing their education at a local polytechnic high school built a filter that will optimise the reuse and harvesting of water.

“The care of water has to start with the children,” Alejandra Rodríguez, who has a son who attends the school in Samo Alto, a rural village on the slopes of the Andes Mountains in Río Hurtado, a small municipality of about 4,000 inhabitants in the Coquimbo region, told IPS.

“My son brought me a tomato he harvested, to use the seeds. For them, the harvest is the prize. He planted his garden next to the house and it was very exciting,” said Maritza Vega, a teacher at the school, which has 77 students ranging in age from four to 15.

The principal of the school, Omar Santander, told IPS during a tour of rural schools in the area involved in the project that “the Hurtado River (which gives the municipality its name) was traditionally generous, but today it only has enough water for us to alternate the crops that are irrigated, every few days. People fight over watering rights.”

The Samo Alto school collects rainwater and recycles water after different uses. “The water is then sent to a double filter,” he explained, pointing out that they have a pond that holds 5,000 liters.

The monthly water bill is much lower, but Santander believes that the most important thing “is the awareness it has generated in the children.”

“There used to be water here, and the adults’ habits come from back then. The students help raise awareness in their families. We want the environmental dimension to be a tool for life,” he said.

For Admalén Flores, a 13-year-old student, “the tomatoes you harvest are tastier and better,” while Alexandra Honores, also 13, said “my grandfather now reuses water.”

El Guindo primary school, located 10 kilometers from the city of Ovalle, the municipal seat, in a town known as a hotspot for drug sales, performed poorly in tests until three years ago.

At that time, the principal, Patricio Bórquez, and the science teacher, Gisela Jaime, launched a process of greywater recovery. They also planted trees and native species of plants to adapt to the dry environment of the municipality of 111,000 inhabitants, located about 400 kilometers north of Santiago.

Four students, ages 13 and 14, talk to IPS about how the water reuse project has made them aware of the importance of taking care of water in the semi-arid territory where they live, in a classroom at the rural school of El Guindo, in the municipality of Ovalle, Chile. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

“The project was born because there was no vegetation,” said the teacher. Today they recover 8,000 litres of water a month. “Teaching care for the environment provides a life skill,” said Bórquez.

“Our school had the stigma of being in a place rife with drug addiction. Today in Ovalle we are known as the school with the most programs. We placed third in science,” she said.

Jaime described the experience as “gratifying” because it has offered “tools to grow and create awareness among children and the entire community about the importance of caring for water and other resources.”

Geographer Nicolás Schneider, founder of the “Un Alto en el Desierto” Foundation, told IPS that his non-governmental organisation estimates that one million litres of greywater have been recovered after eight years of work with rural schools in Ovalle.

In this arid municipality with variable rainfall, “only 37.6 mm of rainwater fell in 2018 – well below the normal average for the 1981-2010 period of 105.9 mm,” Catalina Cortés, an expert with Chile’s meteorology institute, told IPS from Santiago.

Schneider describes the water situation as critical in the Coquimbo region, which is on the southern border of the Atacama Desert and where 90 percent of the territory is eroded and degraded.

“Due to climate change, it is raining less and less and when it does, the rainfall is very concentrated. Both the lack of rain and the concentration of rainfall cause serious damage to the local population,” she said.

Innovative recycling filter

With guidance from their teachers, students at the Ovalle polytechnic high school built a filtration system devised by Eduardo Leiva, a professor of chemistry and pharmacy at the Catholic University. The filter seeks to raise the technical standard with which greywater is purified.

Duan Urqueta, 17, a fourth-year electronics student at the Ovalle polytechnic high school, describes the award-winning greywater filter he helped to build. Initially, units will be installed in eight rural schools in this municipality in northern Chile. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

The prototype recycles the greywater from the bathrooms used by the 1,200 students at the polytechnic high school. This water is used to irrigate three areas with 48 different species of trees. Similar filters will be installed in eight rural schools in Ovalle.

The quality of the recovered water will improve due to the filter built thanks to a project by the Innovation Fund for Competitiveness of the regional government of Coquimbo, with the participation of the Catholic University, the “Un Alto en el Desierto” Foundation, and the Ovalle polytechnic high school.

The prototype was built by 18 students and eight teachers of mechanics, industrial assembly, electronics, electricity and technical drawing, and includes two 1,000-litre ponds.

The primary pond holds water piped from the bathroom sinks by gravity which is then pumped to a filter consisting of three columns measuring 0.35 meters high and 0.40 meters in diameter.

“The filter material in each column…can be activated charcoal, sand or gravel,” said Hernán Toro, the head teacher of industrial assembly.

Toro told IPS that “the prototype has a column with zeolite and two columns of activated charcoal. The columns are mounted on a metal structure 2.60 meters high.”

View of the water cleaning filter designed at the Ovalle polytechnic high school and built by a group of teachers and students with funding from the government of the region of Coquimbo, in northern Chile. Each unit costs 2,170 dollars and it will promote water recycling in the schools in the semi-arid municipality. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

The water is pumped from the pond to the filter’s highest column, passes through the filter material and by gravity runs sequentially through the other columns. Finally, the water is piped into the secondary pond and by means of another electric pump it reaches the irrigation system.

Duan Urqueta, a 17-year-old electronics student, told IPS that they took soil and water samples in seven towns in Ovalle and “we used the worst water to test the filter that is made here at the high school with recyclable materials.”

In 2018, “we won first place with the filter at the Science Fair in La Serena, the capital of the region of Coquimbo,” he said proudly.

Pablo Cortés, a 17-year-old student of industrial assembly, said the project “changed me as a person.”

Toro said the experience “has been enriching and has had a strong social impact. We are sowing the seeds of ecological awareness in the students.”

“It’s a programme that offers learning, service, and assistance to the community. Everyone learns. We have seen people moved to the point of tears in their local communities,” the teacher said.

Now they are going to include solar panels in the project, which will cut energy costs, while they already have an automation system to discharge water, which legally can only be stored for a short time.

Eight schools, including the ones in Samo Alto and El Guindo, are waiting for the new filters, which cost 2,170 dollars per unit.

Schneider believes, however, that at the macro level “water recycling is insufficient” to combat the lack of water in this semi-arid zone. And he goes further, saying “there is an absence of instruments for territorial planning or management of watersheds.”

“Under the current water regulatory framework, the export agribusiness, mainly of fruit, has taken over the valleys, concentrating water use…and the government turns a blind eye,” he complained.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/07/chilean-schools-recycle-greywater-combat-drought/feed/0Against All Odds, Indigenous Villages Generate Their Own Energy in Guatemalahttp://www.ipsnews.net/2019/04/odds-indigenous-villages-generate-energy-guatemala/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=odds-indigenous-villages-generate-energy-guatemala
http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/04/odds-indigenous-villages-generate-energy-guatemala/#respondTue, 23 Apr 2019 19:26:18 +0000Edgardo Ayalahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=161298In the stifling heat, Diego Matom takes the bread trays out of the oven and carefully places them on wooden shelves, happy that his business has prospered since his village in northwest Guatemala began to generate its own electricity. And it managed to do so against all odds, facing down big business and the local […]

Diego Matom, a member of the Ixil indigenous community, poses happily with his family, surrounded by fresh loaves of bread which were baked thanks to community electricity generation, which has given his business a big boost, in the 31 de Mayo village in the mountainous ecoregion of Zona Reina, in northwestern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo AyalaUSPANTÁN, Guatemala, Apr 23 2019 (IPS)

In the stifling heat, Diego Matom takes the bread trays out of the oven and carefully places them on wooden shelves, happy that his business has prospered since his village in northwest Guatemala began to generate its own electricity.

And it managed to do so against all odds, facing down big business and the local authorities.

“The bakery used to operate with a gas oven, but the cost was very high because baking took a long time; now everything is faster and cheaper,” Matom told IPS, surrounded by his freshly baked loaves of bread.

Matom, a 29-year-old Ixil Indian, lives in the village of 31 de Mayo, located in the ecoregion of Zona Reina, Uspantán municipality, in the northwestern department of Quiché, Guatemala.

The village, some 300 kilometers north of the capital, was the first of four in the area to build its own hydroelectric plant, driven by necessity, since the state does not bring basic public services to this remote region.

There is no piped water, and medical and educational services are scarce, as is the case in many rural areas of this Central American nation of 17.3 million inhabitants.

In the communities of Zona Reina, water for human consumption comes from the springs perched in the mountains surrounding the villages, which is stored in tanks from which it is piped.

The 31 de Mayo power plant, called Light of the Heroes and Martyrs of the Resistance, consists of a turbine that generates 75 kW and is powered by the waters of the Putul River, channeled by a two-kilometer concrete channel into a 40-cubic-meter tank.

From there, the water runs down with enough pressure to move the turbine in the engine room.

The name of the village recalls the date on which some 400 Ixil and Quiché indigenous families were resettled there by the government in 1998, after the end of the 1960-1996 civil war.

These families were part of the so-called Communities of Population in Resistance, which during the conflict had to flee to the mountains due to repression by the army, which considered them supporters of the left-wing guerrilla.

Once resettled, each family received a small plot of land, where they plant corn and cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum), of which Guatemala is the world’s largest producer and one of the top exporters.

Following the example of 31 de Mayo, three other communities in Zona Reina struggled to become self-sufficient in electricity: El Lirio in May 2015, La Taña in September 2016 and La Gloria in November 2017.

The machine house for the mini-hydropower dam in the 31 de Mayo village, which provides energy to some 500 families and has served as a model for self-generation from community dams to extend throughout the Zona Reina ecoregion in the municipality of Uspantán in northwestern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Unlike large-scale dams, which typically use 100 percent of river flow, community dams use only 10 percent, maintaining normal flow and preventing communities from running out of water downstream.

The four mini-hydroelectric plants supply the four villages where they are located and five neighbouring villages, benefiting a total of 1,000 families. But much remains to be done to promote access to energy throughout the Zona Reina, where there are a total of 86 villages.

But word is spreading and there is already another project approved for eight other villages, in the neighbouring ecoregion of Los Copones, that will share the energy generated with 11 neighbouring communities. The plan has received 1.25 million dollars in development aid financing from Germany.

The population in the Zona Reina is mainly indigenous, composed mainly of the Q’eqch’is, although they live alongside other Mayan peoples, such as the Ixil.

“Now that we have electricity we can do whatever we want, the kids come home from school and plug in their computers and do their homework,” said Zaida Gamarro, 31, a resident of La Taña.

Life used to be more difficult because at night the villagers used candles or lanterns for which they had to buy kerosene regularly, Gamarro told IPS during a tour of the villages that have community dams, located in a mountainous area where travel by road is difficult.

Several businesses such as the Matom bakery have also emerged, along with mechanics’ garages, carpentry workshops and several shops that can now use refrigerators.

“The business is going well, because we are located on the main street, and people are interested in our refrigerated products,” said José Ical, 38, a native of La Gloria and the owner of a small grocery store.

These efforts were made possible thanks to European development aid funds and local work by the environmental collective MadreSelva, in charge of designing and executing micro-hydroelectricity projects.

The families pay an average of 30 quetzals (about four dollars) per month for energy – less than what is paid by families in municipalities on the main power grid.

Countercurrent self-generation

The idea for local inhabitants to produce their own energy clashed with the interests of international consortiums and ran into resistance from mayors allied with those groups, said those interviewed in the communities.

A man shows the 27-cubic-meter tank of the La Taña community hydropower system, one of four installed in this remote mountainous region populated mostly by indigenous people in the northwestern department of Quiché, Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Specifically, they accused the Italian transnational company Enel Green Power, which runs the Palo Viejo Hydroelectric Project in the area, of carrying out a smear campaign against community dams.

A community hydroelectric plant, they said, runs counter to the system by which the state grants concessions to companies, which become the sole providers of those services.

The company, they added, maneuvered to divide the 31 de Mayo community, convincing some 100 families to abandon the project and thus weaken it, through a South African Pentecostal evangelist, Gregorio Walton, who offered solar panels to those who left the community project.

“There is a great deal of manipulation on the part of Enel, it wants to make people believe that the community project can’t work, that only the company can provide good electricity,” said Regina Ramos, from the community of 31 de Mayo.

Enel Green Power representatives did not respond to IPS’ request for comment.

“We don’t want companies like Enel, they just come to destroy our rivers and leave the community nothing,” said Max Chaman Simac, president of the Amaluna Nuevo Amanecer Association of La Taña.

Enel’s Palo Viejo power plant began to operate in March 2012, with a capacity of 85 MW. The consortium now has five hydroelectric plants in Guatemala. In total, it has 640 plants in Europe and the Americas.

The inhabitants of these villages maintained that the consortium was able to enter the region thanks to the permit granted by the then mayor of Uspantán, Víctor Hugo Figueroa.

“He was part of a strategy of land grabbing, in favour of extractive projects,” one of MadreSelva’s members, José Cruz, told IPS.

Other projects flourish

Meanwhile, the MadreSelva collective has sought to develop agroecological projects that help conserve ecosystems, especially in watersheds, and at the same time generate incomes for families.

Taking advantage of the organisation originally set up for the energy projects, a group of women now produce eco-friendly shampoos and soaps made from plants, ash, salt and other ingredients.

The families thus save money on basic products, and some of the women have also started to market them.

“We are encouraging people to plant home gardens, including herbs like rosemary, chamomile, etc., as well as the usual vegetables,” Mercedes Monzón, an activist in charge of these projects on the part of Madre Selva, told IPS.

Another initiative in this direction is the production of natural broths, based on rosemary, basil, dill, parsley and other aromatic herbs, which reduces the purchase of these products, whose wrappers bring pollution to the area.

]]>The post Rapa Nui’s Stone Statues and Marine Resources Face Threats from Climate Change appeared first on Inter Press Service.
]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/02/rapa-nuis-stone-statues-marine-resources-face-threats-climate-change/feed/0Thermal Houses Keep People Warm in Peru’s Highlandshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2018/12/thermal-houses-keep-people-warm-perus-highlands/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=thermal-houses-keep-people-warm-perus-highlands
http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/12/thermal-houses-keep-people-warm-perus-highlands/#respondThu, 06 Dec 2018 03:14:36 +0000Mariela Jarahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=159061Thirty families from a rural community more than 4,300 meters above sea level will have warm houses that will protect them from the freezing temperatures that each year cause deaths and diseases among children and older adults in this region of the southeastern Peruvian Andes. José Tito, 46, and Celia Chumarca, one year younger, peasant […]

]]>The post Thermal Houses Keep People Warm in Peru’s Highlands appeared first on Inter Press Service.
]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/12/thermal-houses-keep-people-warm-perus-highlands/feed/0Cuba’s Only Semiarid Region Reinvents Agriculture to Survivehttp://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/cubas-semiarid-region-reinvents-agriculture-survive/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cubas-semiarid-region-reinvents-agriculture-survive
http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/cubas-semiarid-region-reinvents-agriculture-survive/#respondMon, 19 Nov 2018 04:02:00 +0000Ivet Gonzalezhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=158713At a brisk pace, Marciano Calamato and Mireya Noa walk along the dry, yellow soil of their farm, where they even manage to grow onions in Cuba’s unique semi-arid eastern region. The region, which has a particularly sensitive ecosystem due to the large number of endemic species, covers 1,752 square kilometers in the southern part […]

Mireya Noa and Marciano Calamato are a couple who have a farm in Cuba's only semiarid zone, in the eastern province of Guantánamo. Thanks to the trees they planted, they were able to shade areas of the land, cool things down and counteract the strong evaporation of water from the soil in this coastal and semi-desert eco-region. Credit: Ivet González/IPS

By Ivet GonzálezSAN ANTONIO DEL SUR, Cuba, Nov 19 2018 (IPS)

At a brisk pace, Marciano Calamato and Mireya Noa walk along the dry, yellow soil of their farm, where they even manage to grow onions in Cuba’s unique semi-arid eastern region.

The region, which has a particularly sensitive ecosystem due to the large number of endemic species, covers 1,752 square kilometers in the southern part of the province of Guantánamo. It is the only semi-arid ecoregion in this Caribbean island nation, and is a world rarity because it is a coastal desert on a relatively large island like Cuba, according to experts.

“It’s difficult, you have to make a great effort. We implement irrigation systems and maintain a well from which we pump to a water tank, and from there to the area of the crops,” explained Calamato, a farmer who in 2008 was granted the 12.4-hectare La Cúrbana farm in usufruct."This is an atypical municipality, with many risks of disasters from drought, coastal flooding from high tides, high-intensity hurricanes and even tsunamis." -- Tania Hernández

As in the rest of the province, one of the least developed in the country, the population of 25,796 inhabitants of the municipality of San Antonio del Sur depends almost exclusively on agriculture, which represents a challenge in the local semi-desert ecozone.

“I participate in everything from planting to putting organic matter around the plant. We have harvested very large onions, beans, tomatoes, beets, cucumbers. Everything we plant grows well, as long as it has water,” Noa said, discussing how they manage their nutrient-poor soils.

The leafy canopies of fruit trees and drought-resistant species provide shade in the centre of La Cúrbana, where the small rustic wooden house of Calamato and Noa is located, along with a greenhouse, water tanks for human consumption, a storehouse for household goods and corrals for 40 head of goats and more than 20 barnyard fowl.

La Cúrbana, where the family grows crops on a small scale, and which is self-sufficient in animal feed, also has small livestock – the type of farm recommended by experts in agriculture in a semi-arid ecosystem.

“The farms down here are very focused on animal production, small livestock, which is the most suitable for this land. And there are alternatives for achieving self-sufficiency, that is, for family self-consumption and animal feed,” said geographer Ricardo Delgado.

He forms part of the coordinating committee for the project “Ponte Alerta Caribe: Harmonising risk management strategies and tools with an inclusive approach in the Caribbean”, which is being implemented in Cuba and the Dominican Republic until early 2019, in order to strengthen national and regional institutional capacities.

Agricultural worker Abigail Castro points to where the sea is, from the La Fortuna farm in the municipality of San Antonio del Sur, Guantánamo province in eastern Cuba, which has a unique semiarid coastal ecosystem. Credit: Ivet González/IPS

Among its diverse actions in Cuba is strengthening drought resilience in San Antonio del Sur, IPS learned during several tours of farms seeking to adapt to climate change in this municipality, where this reporter spoke to farmers, specialists and authorities in the area.

Ponte Alerta strengthened the Guantánamo meteorological centre to process drought data and equipped it with portable weather stations for distribution on some farms and the data processing system. It also supported the adaptation of a drought resilience tool to the coastal conditions in the municipality.

“This is the most disadvantaged part of the municipality’s land. But La Cúrbana is a very good experience of a farm that has adapted to these conditions,” said geologist Yusmira Savón, who has participated in several projects involving efforts to adapt to drought in the area.

A cocktail of agroecological techniques, water management, soil management, productive reconversion, resilience to drought and the use of renewable energies make up the formula prescribed by experts to farmers in a municipality that reports a very low average annual rainfall, less than 200 millimeters.

“The soils of the semiarid ecosystem in San Antonio del Sur have exploitable qualities from a chemical point of view, because they are loose soils that are prepared and, with the help of organic matter and water, can be farmed with a certain margin of profitability,” said agronomist Loexys Rodríguez.

The expert warned about changes that affect the eco-region, such as the one degree Celsius increase in the current temperature with respect to the average recorded between 1980 and 2010, and changes in rain intensity and seasonal rainfall variability.

All of these factors increase drought-related problems and put pressure on the area’s productive sector, where environmental authorities are also implementing programmes to combat deforestation and desertification.

Just nine meters from the sea, Abigail Castro is working on the La Fortuna farm, which on six hectares produces more than 46 tons a year of various crops such as onions, tomatoes, beans, yucca, melons, plantains (cooking bananas) and beans (Phaseolus vulgaris).

Marciano Calamato stands next to the well and water tank on his farm, which enable him to irrigate his crops at least once a day, in Cuba’s only semi-desert zone, in San Antonio del Sur, a municipality in southeast Cuba. Credit: Ivet González/IPS

“We have a natural windbreak to protect the crops from strong sea winds,” he said proudly.

Castro said: “We don’t have coastal flooding from high tides here, but the river does flood everything when there are cyclones, and we remain incommunicado. The people are evacuated to the town and we take the animals to the mountains,” he said, explaining how the local farmers face climatic events, the most serious in recent times being Hurricane Matthew, which hit the eastern part of the island in 2016.

In La Fortuna, the shiny green crops contrast with the dry soil and the scorching sun. “The problem along the coast is drought, which is very bad, but here the crops suffer fewer pests,” said José Luis Rustán, who in 2008 was granted use of this land, where weeds used to rule.

“In addition to ensuring irrigation, we apply a lot of organic matter. I produce it myself: I use manure from the corrals and I make compost and green fertiliser. I’ve also used bat guano,” said the farmer, who has developed his farm with his own means.

For his part, agronomist Yandy Leyva, who works on the La Piedra farm, where sheeps are raised for meat, and who takes part in Ponte Alerta Caribe, recommended greater use of efficient microorganisms (biofertilisers) by farms in the semiarid ecosystem, where he believes they could even be sold.

He also lamented the fact that the irrigation systems available to the farmers are very old, “and are flood irrigation systems, which wash away and degrade the land.”

“We have to take measures like dams and soil cover and increase the density of crops in order to mitigate this problem,” he said.

Other national and international cooperation projects in the semiarid region promote the use of renewable energies and the planting of species adapted to this ecosystem, which contribute to reforestation and create jobs.

These species include the neem tree (Azadirachta indica), which originates in India and is mainly used to make fertilisers, and jatropha (Jatropha curcas), which is used to produce biodiesel.

“This is an atypical municipality, with many risks of disasters from drought, coastal flooding from high tides, high-intensity hurricanes and even tsunamis,” said Tania Hernández, vice president for local government risk management.

And like the rest of the Cuban municipalities, San Antonio del Sur aspires to strengthen food security. “We are 100 percent self-sufficient in tubers and vegetables, but other items have to be imported,” said the official.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/cubas-semiarid-region-reinvents-agriculture-survive/feed/0Women Make the Voice of Indigenous People Heard in Argentinahttp://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/women-make-voice-indigenous-people-heard-argentina/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=women-make-voice-indigenous-people-heard-argentina
http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/women-make-voice-indigenous-people-heard-argentina/#respondWed, 14 Nov 2018 21:38:52 +0000Daniel Gutmanhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=158673The seed was planted more than 20 years ago by a group of indigenous women who began to gather to try to recover memories from their people. Today, women are also the main protagonists of La Voz Indígena (The Indigenous Voice), a unique radio station in northern Argentina that broadcasts every day in seven languages. […]

]]>The post Women Make the Voice of Indigenous People Heard in Argentina appeared first on Inter Press Service.
]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/women-make-voice-indigenous-people-heard-argentina/feed/0Diversifying Crops to Help Overcome Drought in Brazilhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/diversifying-crops-help-overcome-drought-brazil/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=diversifying-crops-help-overcome-drought-brazil
http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/diversifying-crops-help-overcome-drought-brazil/#respondFri, 09 Nov 2018 16:19:01 +0000Mario Osavahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=158617Dozens of trucks used to leave São Gonçalo every day, carrying the local agricultural production, mainly coconuts, to markets throughout Brazil, including the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, more than 2,000 kilometers away. The prosperity of that district in Sousa, a municipality in the northeastern state of Paraíba that has some 70,000 […]

]]>The post Diversifying Crops to Help Overcome Drought in Brazil appeared first on Inter Press Service.
]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/diversifying-crops-help-overcome-drought-brazil/feed/0Rainwater Harvesting Eases Daily Struggle in Argentina’s Chaco Regionhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/rainwater-harvesting-eases-daily-struggle-argentinas-chaco-region/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rainwater-harvesting-eases-daily-struggle-argentinas-chaco-region
http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/rainwater-harvesting-eases-daily-struggle-argentinas-chaco-region/#commentsTue, 06 Nov 2018 23:22:31 +0000Daniel Gutmanhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=158571“I’ve been used to hauling water since I was eight years old. Today, at 63, I still do it,” says Antolín Soraire, a tall peasant farmer with a face ravaged by the sun who lives in Los Blancos, a town of a few dozen houses and wide dirt roads in the province of Salta, in […]

Mariano Barraza (L), a member of the Wichi indigenous people, and Enzo Romero, a technician with the Fundapaz organisation, stand next to the rainwater storage tank built in the indigenous community of Lote 6 to supply the local families during the six-month dry season in this part of the province of Salta, in northern Argentina's Chaco region. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel GutmanLOS BLANCOS, Argentina, Nov 6 2018 (IPS)

“I’ve been used to hauling water since I was eight years old. Today, at 63, I still do it,” says Antolín Soraire, a tall peasant farmer with a face ravaged by the sun who lives in Los Blancos, a town of a few dozen houses and wide dirt roads in the province of Salta, in northern Argentina.

In this part of the Chaco, the tropical plain stretching over more than one million square kilometres shared with Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay, living conditions are not easy."I wish the entire Chaco region could be sown with water tanks and we wouldn't have to cry about the lack of water anymore. We don't want 500-meter deep wells or other large projects. We trust local solutions." -- Enzo Romero

For about six months a year, between May and October, it does not rain. And in the southern hemisphere summer, temperatures can climb to 50 degrees Celsius.

Most of the homes in the municipality of Rivadavia Banda Norte, where Los Blancos is located, and in neighbouring municipalities are scattered around rural areas, which are cut off and isolated when it rains. Half of the households cannot afford to meet their basic needs, according to official data, and access to water is still a privilege, especially since there are no rivers in the area.

Drilling wells has rarely provided a solution. “The groundwater is salty and naturally contains arsenic. You have to go more than 450 meters deep to get good water,” Soraire told IPS during a visit to this town of about 1,100 people.

In the last three years, an innovative self-managed system has brought hope to many families in this area, one of the poorest in Argentina: the construction of rooftops made of rainwater collector sheets, which is piped into cement tanks buried in the ground.

Each of these hermetically sealed tanks stores 16,000 litres of rainwater – what is needed by a family of five for drinking and cooking during the six-month dry season.

“When I was a kid, the train would come once a week, bringing us water. Then the train stopped coming and things got really difficult,” recalls Soraire, who is what is known here as a criollo: a descendant of the white men and women who came to the Argentine Chaco since the late 19th century in search of land to raise their animals, following the military expeditions that subjugated the indigenous people of the region.

Today, although many years have passed and the criollos and indigenous people in most cases live in the same poverty, there is still latent tension with the native people who live in isolated rural communities such as Los Blancos or in the slums ringing the larger towns and cities.

Since the early 20th century, the railway mentioned by Soraire linked the 700 kilometres separating the cities of Formosa and Embarcación, and was practically the only means of communication in this area of the Chaco, which until just 10 years ago had no paved roads.

Dorita, a local indigenous woman, stands in front of a “represa” or pond dug near her home, in Lote 6, a Wichí community a few kilometres from the town of Los Blancos, in Argentina’s Chaco region. The ponds accumulate rainwater and are used to provide drinking water for both animals and local families, posing serious health risks. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The trains stopped coming to this area in the 1990s, during the wave of privatisations and spending cuts imposed by neoliberal President Carlos Menem (1989-1999).

Although there have been promises to get the trains running again, in the Chaco villages of Salta today there are only a few memories of the railway: overgrown tracks and rundown brick railway stations that for years have housed homeless families.

“Everyone here wants their own tank,” Enzo Romero, a technician with Fundapaz, a non-governmental organisation that has been working for more than 40 years in rural development in indigenous and criollo settlements of Argentina’s Chaco region, told IPS in Los Blancos. “So we carry out surveys to see which families have the greatest needs.”

The director of Fundapaz, Gabriel Seghezzo, explains that “the beneficiary family must dig a hole 1.20 metres deep by five in diameter, in which the tank is buried. In addition, they have to provide lodging and meals to the builders during the week it takes to build it.”

“It’s very important for the family to work hard for this. In order for this to work out well, it is essential for the beneficiaries to feel they are involved,” Seghezzo told IPS in Salta, the provincial capital.

Fundapaz “imported” the rainwater tank system from Brazil, thanks to its many contacts with social organisations in that country, especially groups working for solutions to the chronic drought in the Northeast region.

Antolín Soraire, a “criollo” farmer from the Chaco region of Salta, stands in front of one of the tanks he built in Los Blancos to collect rainwater, which provides families with drinking water for their needs during the six-month dry season in northern Argentina. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Romero points out that so far some 40 rooftops and water tanks have been built – at a cost of about 1,000 dollars each – in the municipality of Rivadavia Banda Norte, which is 12,000 square kilometres in size and has some 10,000 inhabitants. This number of tanks is, of course, a very small part of what is needed, he added.

“I wish the entire Chaco region could be sown with water tanks and we wouldn’t have to cry about the lack of water anymore. We don’t want 500-meter deep wells or other large projects. We trust local solutions,” says Romero, who studied environmental engineering at the National University of Salta and moved several years ago to Morillo, the capital of the municipality, 1,600 kilometres north of Buenos Aires.

On National Route 81, the only paved road in the area, it is advisable to travel slowly: as there are no fences, pigs, goats, chickens and other animals raised by indigenous and criollo families constantly wander across the road.

Near the road, in the mountains, live indigenous communities, such as those known as Lote 6 and Lote 8, which occupy former public land now recognised as belonging to members of the Wichí ethnic group, one of the largest native communities in Argentina, made up of around 51,000 people, according to official figures that are considered an under-registration.

In Lote 6, Dorita, a mother of seven, lives with her husband Mariano Barraza in a brick house with a tin roof, surrounded by free-ranging goats and chickens. The children and their families return seasonally from Los Blancos, where the grandchildren go to school, which like transportation is not available in the community.

Three children play under a roof next to goats in Lote 6, an indigenous community in the province of Salta in northern Argentina. It is one of the poorest areas in the country, with half of the population having unmet basic needs, and where the shortage of drinking water is the most serious problem. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

About 100 metres from the house, Dorita, who preferred not to give her last name, shows IPS a small pond with greenish water. In the region of Salta families dig these “represas” to store rainwater.

The families of Lot 6 today have a rooftop that collects rainwater and storage tank, but they used to use water from the “represas” – the same water that the animals drank, and often soiled.

“The kids get sick. But the families often consume the contaminated water from the ‘represas’ because they have no alternative,” Silvia Reynoso, a Catholic nun who works for Fundapaz in the area, told IPS.

In neighboring Lote 8, Anacleto Montes, a Wichi indigenous man who has an 80-square-metre rooftop that collects rainwater, explains: “This was a solution. Because we ask the municipality to bring us water, but there are times when the truck is not available and the water doesn’t arrive.”

What Montes doesn’t say is that water in the Chaco has also been used to buy political support in a patronage-based system.

Lalo Bertea, who heads the Tepeyac Foundation, an organisation linked to the Catholic Church that has been working in the area for 20 years, told IPS: “Usually in times of drought, the municipality distributes water. And it chooses where to bring water based on political reasons. The people in the area are so used to this that they consider it normal.”

“Water scarcity is the most serious social problem in this part of the Chaco,” says Bertea, who maintains that rainwater collection also has its limits and is experimenting with the purchase of Mexican pumps to extract groundwater when it can be found at a reasonable depth.

“The incredible thing about all this is that the Chaco is not the Sahara desert. There is water, but the big question is how to access it,” he says.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/rainwater-harvesting-eases-daily-struggle-argentinas-chaco-region/feed/1Youth in Latin America Learn About Paths to Clean Energyhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2018/10/youth-latin-america-learn-paths-clean-energy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=youth-latin-america-learn-paths-clean-energy
http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/10/youth-latin-america-learn-paths-clean-energy/#respondMon, 29 Oct 2018 03:34:17 +0000Mariela Jarahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=158404Young Peruvians plan to take advantage of the knowledge acquired in Brazil’s semi-arid Northeast to bring water to segments of the population who suffer from shortages, after sharing experiences in that ecoregion on the multiple uses of renewable energies in communities affected by climatic phenomena. Freyre Pedraza and Yeffel Pedreros, both 24-year-old environmental engineers, were […]

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]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/10/youth-latin-america-learn-paths-clean-energy/feed/0Honduran Migrant Caravan Moves Northwards, Defying all Obstacleshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2018/10/honduran-migrant-caravan-moves-northwards-defying-obstacles/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=honduran-migrant-caravan-moves-northwards-defying-obstacles
http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/10/honduran-migrant-caravan-moves-northwards-defying-obstacles/#respondMon, 22 Oct 2018 23:17:39 +0000Daniela Pastranahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=158301A long chain of people is winding its way along the highways of Chiapas, the southernmost Mexican state. It is moving fast, despite the fact that one-third of its ranks are made up of children, and it has managed to avoid the multiple obstacles that the governments of Honduras, Guatemala and now Mexico, under pressure […]

In the central park of the southern Mexican city of Tapachula, a camp was improvised, where thousands of migrants stopped to rest and wash before proceeding to the border with the United States, 2,000 kilometres away. People of all ages, entire families and many children are part of the caravan that began its desperate trek on Oct. 13 in Honduras. Credit: Javier García/IPS

By Daniela PastranaTAPACHULA, Mexico, Oct 22 2018 (IPS)

A long chain of people is winding its way along the highways of Chiapas, the southernmost Mexican state. It is moving fast, despite the fact that one-third of its ranks are made up of children, and it has managed to avoid the multiple obstacles that the governments of Honduras, Guatemala and now Mexico, under pressure from the United States, have thrown up in a vain effort to stop it.

Every attempt to make it shrink seems to have the opposite effect. And on Monday Oct. 22, some 7,000 Central Americans, most of them Hondurans, kept walking northward, in defiance of U.S. President Donald Trump’s warning to do everything possible to “stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing” the U.S.-Mexico border."This is giving rise to something like a trail of ants, and we don't know where it's going to end…We're going to be seeing mass exoduses much more similar to those we see from Africa to Europe." -- Quique Vidal Olascoaga

The caravan that set out from San Pedro Sula, in northern Honduras, in the early hours of Oct. 13, has put the migration policy of the entire region in check. Trump took it up as the campaign theme for the Nov. 6 mid-term elections, and via Twitter, threatened Honduras with immediate withdrawal of any financial aid.

“People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first and if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away,” Trump tweeted.

The caravan isn’t stopping. In nine days it has travelled a little more than 700 kilometres to reach Tapachula, a city of 300,000 inhabitants, close to the border, which has welcomed the migrants’ arrival with food, beverages and encouraging messages.

Groups of activists and human rights defenders are preparing to meet them in different parts of the country. “This is not a caravan, it’s an exodus,” say migrant advocates.

There is still a long road ahead, however. The migrants still have 2,000 kilometres to go before reaching the nearest Mexican-U.S. border crossing, in an area governed by criminal groups, which have made migrant smuggling one of the country’s most lucrative businesses.

In addition, the Mexican government has threatened to detain them if they leave Chiapas, where local legislation allows them to be in transit with few requirements because it is a border zone.

But none of this has prevented new groups of migrants from arriving every day to join the caravan.

The number of children in the arms of their parents is striking, as they walk kilometre after kilometer, cross rivers and border barriers, or wait for hours in crowded, unsanitary conditions, in suffocating temperatures.

The stories they tell are heartbreaking.

A line of more than five kilometres of migrants walked on Sunday, Oct 21, from Ciudad Hidalgo to Tapachula, 40 kilometers inside the state of Chiapas, in southern Mexico. There are 2,000 kilometres left to the U.S.-Mexico border, along a route that is partly controlled by organised crime groups. Credit: Javier García/IPS

“We don’t have a job, we don’t have medicine, we have nothing in our country, we can’t even afford to eat properly. I want to get to the United States to raise my children,” Ramón Rodríguez, a man from San Pedro Sula who arrived with his whole family to the Guatemalan-Mexican border on Oct. 17, told IPS in tears.

In the last decade, human rights organisations and journalists have documented the massive displacement of Central Americans toward the southern border of Mexico, and have repeatedly warned of a humanitarian crisis that is being ignored.

The Mesoamerican Migrant Movement, which has organised 14 caravans of mothers of migrants who have disappeared in Mexican territory, has also described the situation in the Northern Triangle as a “humanitarian tragedy”.

The violence, along with precarious labour and economic conditions, skyrocketed a few days ago when the government of Juan Orlando Hernandez announced hikes in the electricity rates.

According to versions given by Hondurans who arrived in Mexico, it was Bartolo Fuentes, a pastor and former legislator who has participated in several caravans in Mexico, who launched the call for a collective march to the United States.

They were to gather in the Great Metropolitan Central bus station in San Pedro Sula. Around one thousand people showed up.

Hundreds of Mexicans mobilised to help Central American migrants, many giving rides in their cars and trucks to members of the caravan, to ease their journey to Tapachula, where other supportive residents provided them with food and beverages. Credit: Javier García/IPS

“Many of us thought that in a group it was easier and safer, because we know that going through Mexico is dangerous,” a member of the caravan who asked for anonymity told IPS. “Later, messages began to arrive through Whatsapp (the instant messaging network), and people began to organise to flee the country,” he said.

By Oct. 15, another group had organised in Choluteca, in southern Honduras, and yet another in Tegucigalpa.

The Honduran government tried to close the border crossings, but was unable to stop some 3,000 people from leaving the country and crossing Guatemala. The detention and deportation of Pastor Fuentes did not stop them either. On Oct. 17, the caravan arrived in the city of Tecún Umán, on the border with Mexico.

The Mexican government had stepped up security at the border and the caravan was stranded on the bridge that joins the two countries. Desperation set in: on Oct. 19, the migrants crossed the police cordon and were dispersed with tear gas.

Faced with media pressure, the Mexican authorities offered “orderly passage” for groups of 30 to 40 people who were to take the steps to apply for refuge.

But it was actually a ruse, because the migrants were taken to an immigration station where they must stay 45 days, and have no guarantees of the regularisation of their immigration status.

The border bridge became a refugee camp, without humanitarian assistance from either government. The only thing the Guatemalan government provided were buses for those who wanted to “voluntarily” return to their country.

Exhausted, many decided to turn around, the disappointment plain to see on their faces.

However, the bulk of the caravan made the decision to swim or raft across the Suchiate River.

For more than 24 hours, images of thousands of people crossing the river circled the world, while other groups of migrants continued to arrive at the border to join the caravan that today numbers more than 7,000 people, according to human rights groups.

Some activists believe that, because of its size and the form it has taken, this caravan could fundamentally change migratory movements in Central America, with people increasingly turning to a new strategy of migrating in huge groups.

“This is giving rise to something like a trail of ants, and we don’t know where it’s going to end,” Quique Vidal Olascoaga, an activist with the organisation Voces Mesoamericanas, told IPS. “We’re going to be seeing mass exoduses much more similar to those we see from Africa to Europe.”

With reporting by Rodrigo Soberanes and Angeles Mariscal, from various places in the state of Chiapas.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/10/honduran-migrant-caravan-moves-northwards-defying-obstacles/feed/0Venezuela’s Surname Is Diasporahttp://www.ipsnews.net/2018/09/venezuelas-surname-diaspora/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=venezuelas-surname-diaspora
http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/09/venezuelas-surname-diaspora/#respondFri, 28 Sep 2018 21:49:10 +0000Humberto Marquezhttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=157885They sell their houses, cars, motorcycles, household goods, clothes and ornaments – if they have any – even at derisory prices, save up a few dollars, take a bus and, in many cases, for the first time ever travel outside their country: they are the migrants who are fleeing Venezuela by the hundreds of thousands. […]

]]>The post Venezuela’s Surname Is Diaspora appeared first on Inter Press Service.
]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/09/venezuelas-surname-diaspora/feed/0The Sun Powers a Women’s Bakery in Brazil’s Semi-arid Northeasthttp://www.ipsnews.net/2018/08/sun-powers-womens-bakery-brazils-semi-arid-northeast/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sun-powers-womens-bakery-brazils-semi-arid-northeast
http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/08/sun-powers-womens-bakery-brazils-semi-arid-northeast/#respondThu, 02 Aug 2018 01:40:08 +0000Mario Osavahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=157012“The sun which used to torment us now blesses us,” said one of the 19 women who run the Community Bakery of Varzea Comprida dos Oliveiras, a settlement in the rural area of Pombal, a municipality of the state of Paraiba, in Brazil’s semi-arid Northeast. “Without solar energy our bakery would be closed, we would […]

]]>The post The Sun Powers a Women’s Bakery in Brazil’s Semi-arid Northeast appeared first on Inter Press Service.
]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/08/sun-powers-womens-bakery-brazils-semi-arid-northeast/feed/0Even Rocks Harvest Water in Brazil’s Semi-Arid Northeasthttp://www.ipsnews.net/2018/07/even-rocks-harvest-water-brazils-semi-arid-northeast/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=even-rocks-harvest-water-brazils-semi-arid-northeast
http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/07/even-rocks-harvest-water-brazils-semi-arid-northeast/#respondFri, 20 Jul 2018 10:02:00 +0000Mario Osavahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=156776Rocks, once a hindrance since they reduced arable land, have become an asset. Pedrina Pereira and João Leite used them to build four ponds to collect rainwater in a farming community in Brazil’s semi-arid Northeast. On their six-hectare property, the couple store water in three other reservoirs, the “mud trenches”, the name given locally to […]

Beans are left to dry in the sun on Pedrina Pereira’s small farm. In the background, a tank collects rainwater for drinking and cooking, from the rooftop. It is part of a programme of the organisation Articulation in Brazil’s Semi Arid Region (ASA), which aims to distribute one million rainwater tanks to achieve coexistence with the semi-arid climate which extends across 982,000 sq km in Northeast Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario OsavaJUAZEIRINHO/BOM JARDIM, Brazil, Jul 20 2018 (IPS)

Rocks, once a hindrance since they reduced arable land, have become an asset. Pedrina Pereira and João Leite used them to build four ponds to collect rainwater in a farming community in Brazil’s semi-arid Northeast.

On their six-hectare property, the couple store water in three other reservoirs, the “mud trenches”, the name given locally to pits that are dug deep in the ground to store as much water as possible in the smallest possible area to reduce evaporation.

“We no longer suffer from a shortage of water,” not even during the drought that has lasted the last six years, said Pereira, a 47-year-old peasant farmer, on the family’s small farm in Juazeirinho, a municipality in the Northeast state of Paraíba.

Only at the beginning of this year did they have to resort to water distributed by the army to local settlements, but “only for drinking,” Pereira told IPS proudly during a visit to several communities that use innovative water technologies that are changing the lives of small villages and family farmers in this rugged region.

To irrigate their maize, bean, vegetable crops and fruit trees, the couple had four “stone ponds” and three mud trenches, enough to water their sheep and chickens.

“The water in that pond is even drinkable, it has that whitish colour because of the soil,” but that does not affect its taste or people’s health, said Pereira, pointing to the smallest of the ponds, “which my husband dug out of the rocks with the help of neighbours.”

“There was nothing here when we arrived in 2007, just a small mud pond, which dried up after the rainy season ended,” she said. They bought the property where they built the house and lived without electricity until 2010, when they got electric power and a rainwater tank, which changed their lives.

The One Million Cisterns Programme (P1MC) was underway for a decade. With the programme, the Articulation of the Semi Arid (ASA), a network of 3,000 social organisations, is seeking to achieve universal access to drinking water in the rural areas of the Northeast semi-arid ecoregion, which had eight million inhabitants in the 2010 official census.

Two of the four stone ponds on the farm belonging to Pedrina Pereira and João Leite, built by Leite with the help of neighbours, in a farming community in Juazeirinho. The tanks store rainwater for their livestock and their diversified crops during the frequent droughts in Brazil’s semi-arid ecoregion. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The network promoted the construction of 615,597 tanks that collect water from rooftops, for use in drinking and cooking. The tanks hold 16,000 litres of water, considered sufficient for a family of five during the usual eight-month low-water period.

Other initiatives outside ASA helped disseminate rainwater tanks, which mitigated the effects of the drought that affected the semi-arid Northeast between 2012 and 2017.

According to Antonio Barbosa, coordinator of the One Land, Two Waters Programme (P1+2) promoted by ASA since 2007, the rainwater tanks helped to prevent a repeat of the tragedy seen during previous droughts, such as the 1979-1983 drought, which “caused the death of a million people.”

After the initial tank is built, rainwater collection is expanded for the purposes of irrigation and raising livestock, by means of tanks like the ones built in 2013 on the farm belonging to Pereira and her husband since 2013. ASA has distributed 97,508 of these tanks, benefiting 100,828 families.

Other solutions, used for irrigation or water for livestock, include ponds built on large rocks or water pumps used by communities to draw water from deep wells.

Tanks holding up to 52,000 litres of rainwater, collected using the “calçadão” system, where water runs down a sloping concrete terrace or even a road into the tank, are another of the seven “water technologies” for irrigation and animal consumption disseminated by the organisations that make up ASA.

Pedro Custodio da Silva shows his native seed bank at his farm in the municipality of Bom Jardim, in Northeast Brazil, part of a movement driven by the Articulation in Brazil’s Semi Arid Region (ASA), a network of 3,000 social organisations, to promote family farming based on their own seeds adapted to the local climate. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The tanks and terraces are made with donated material, and the beneficiaries must take part in the construction and receive training in water management, focused on coexistence with the semi-arid climate. Community action and sharing of experiences among farmers is also promoted.

Beans drying in the courtyard, and piled up inside the house, even in the bedroom, show that the Pereira and Leite family, which also includes their son, Salvador – who has inherited his parents’ devotion to farming – managed to get a good harvest after this year’s adequate rainfall.

Maize, sweet potato, watermelon, pumpkin, pepper, tomato, aubergine, other vegetables and medicinal herbs make up the vegetable garden that mother and son manage, within a productive diversification that is a widespread practice among farmers in the semi-arid region.

A pond supplied by a water source revived by reforestation on the 2.5-hectare farm of Pedro Custodio da Silva, who adopted an agroforestry system and applied agro-ecological principles in the production of fruit and vegetables, in the municipality of Bom Jardim, in the semi-arid region of Northeast Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Also contributing to this diversification are eight sheep and a large chicken coop, which are for self-consumption and for sale. “Our family lives off agriculture alone,” said Pereira, who also benefits from the Bolsa Familia programme, a government subsidy for poor families, which in their case amounts to 34 dollars a month.

“I am one of the customers for Pedrina’s ‘cuzcuz’, which is not only tasty but is also made without toxic agricultural chemicals,” said Gloria Araujo, the head of Patac. She was referring to a kind of corn tortilla that is very popular in the Brazilian Northeast, an important source of income for the family.

Living in the community of Sussuarana, home to 180 families, and forming part of the Regional Collective of farmers, trade unions and associations from 11 municipalities from the central part of the state of Paraiba, offers other opportunities.

Pereira has been able to raise chickens thanks to a barbed wire fence that she acquired through the Revolving Solidarity Fund, which provides a loan, in cash or animals, that when it is paid off goes immediately to another person and so on. A wire mesh weaving machine is for collective use in the community.

In Bom Jardim, 180 km from Juazeirinho, in the neighbouring state of Pernambuco, the community of Feijão (which means ‘beans’) stands out for its agroforestry system and fruit production, much of which is sold at agroecological fairs in Recife, the state capital, 100 km away and with a population of 1.6 million.

“I’ve lived here for 25 years, I started reforesting bare land and they called me crazy, but those who criticised me later planted a beautiful forest,” said Pedro Custodio da Silva, owner of 2.5 hectares and technical coordinator of the Association of Agroecological Farmers of Bom Jardim (Agroflor), which provides assistance to the community.

In addition to a diversified fruit tree orchard and vegetable garden, which provide income from the sale of fruit, vegetables and pulp, “without agrochemicals,” a stream that had dried up three decades ago was revived on his property and continued to run in the severe drought of recent years.

It filled a small 60,000-litre pond whose “water level drops in the dry season, but no longer dries up,” he said.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/07/even-rocks-harvest-water-brazils-semi-arid-northeast/feed/0Agroecology Beats Land and Water Scarcity in Brazilhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2018/07/agroecology-beats-land-water-scarcity-brazil/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=agroecology-beats-land-water-scarcity-brazil
http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/07/agroecology-beats-land-water-scarcity-brazil/#respondThu, 12 Jul 2018 01:26:19 +0000Mario Osavahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=156656“Now we live well,” say both Givaldo and Nina dos Santos, after showing visiting farmers their 1.25-hectare farm in Brazil’s semi-arid Northeast, which is small but has a great variety of fruit trees, thanks to innovative water and production techniques. Givaldo began his adult life in Rio de Janeiro, in the southeast, where he did […]

Givaldo dos Santos stands next to a tree loaded with grapefruit in the orchard which he and his wife have planted thanks to the use of techniques that allow them to have plenty of water for irrigation, despite the fact that their small farm is in Brazil’s semi-arid Northeast. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario OsavaESPERANÇA/CUMARU, Brazil, Jul 12 2018 (IPS)

“Now we live well,” say both Givaldo and Nina dos Santos, after showing visiting farmers their 1.25-hectare farm in Brazil’s semi-arid Northeast, which is small but has a great variety of fruit trees, thanks to innovative water and production techniques.

Givaldo began his adult life in Rio de Janeiro, in the southeast, where he did his military service, married and had three children. Then he returned to his homeland, where it was not easy for him to restart his life on a farm in the municipality of Esperança, in the northeastern state of Paraiba, with his new wife, Maria das Graças, whom everyone knows as Nina and with whom he has a 15-year-old daughter.

“I’d leave at four in the morning to fetch water. I would walk 40 minutes with two cans on my shoulders, going up and down hills,” recalled the 48-year-old farmer.

But in 2000, thanks to a rainwater collection tank, he finally managed to get potable water on Caldeirão, his farm, part of which he inherited.

And in 2011 he got water for production, through a “barreiro” or pond dug into the ground. Two years later, a “calçadão” tank was built on a terrace with a slope to channel rainwater, with the capacity to hold 52,000 litres.

“Now we have plenty of water, despite the drought in the last six years,” said 47-year-old Nina. The “barreiro” only dried up once, two years ago, and for a short time, she said.

The water allowed the couple to expand their fruit orchard with orange, grapefruit, mango, acerola (Malpighia emarginata) and hog plum (Spondias mombin L, typical of the northern and northeastern regions of Brazil) trees.

“When the pulp sale takes off, our income will grow,” said Givaldo. “For now we earn more with orange and lemon seedlings, which sell better because they last longer than other fruits.”

Besides storing water in the “barreiro”, they also raise tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus), a species of fish, for their own consumption. Meanwhile, in the garden, in addition to fruit trees, they grow vegetables, whose production will increase thanks to a small greenhouse that they have just built, where they will plant tomatoes, cilantro and other vegetables for sale, Nina said with enthusiasm.

Joelma Pereira tells visitors from Central America and Brazil about the many sustainable practices that have improved the production on her family farm, on a terrace with a slope, which now has a roof, that makes it easier to capture rainwater, which is collected in a 52,000-litre tank used for the animals and to irrigate crops in Cumaru, in Brazil’s semi-arid Northeast. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The productive activities on their small farm are further diversified by an ecological oven, which they use to make cakes and which cuts down on the use of cooking gas while at the same time using very little wood; by the production of fertilizer using manure from calves they raise and sell when they reach the right weight; and by the storage of native seeds.

The boundaries of their farm are marked by fences made of gliricidias (Gliricidia sepium), a tree native to Mexico and Central America, which offers good animal feed. The Dos Santos family hopes that they will serve as a barrier to the agrochemicals used on the corn crops on neighbouring farms.

Some time ago, the couple stopped raising chickens, which were sold at a good price due to their natural diet. “We had 200, but we sold them all, because there are a lot of robberies here. You can lose your life for a chicken,” Givaldo said.

Organic production, diversified and integrated with the efficient utilisation of water, turned this small farm into a showcase for ASPTA, an example of how to coexist with the semi-arid climate in Brazil’s Northeast.

This is why they frequently receive visitors. “Once we were visited by 52 people,” said the husband.

Another farm visited during the exchange, accompanied by IPS, was that of Joelma and Roberto Pereira, in the municipality of Cumaru, in the state of Pernambuco, also in the Northeast. They even built a roof over the sloping terrace that collects rainwater on their property, to hold meetings there.

Givaldo and Nina dos Santos stand next to the small machine used to extract pulp from the fruit they grow, and the freezer where they store the fruit pulp in units ready for sale at their farm in the municipality of Esperança, in the northeastern Brazilian state of Paraiba. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

Three tanks for drinking water and one for production, a biodigester that generates much more gas than the family consumes, a system for producing liquid biofertiliser, another for composting, a small seedbed, cactus (Nopalea cochinilifera) and other forage plants are squeezed onto just half a hectare.

“We bought this half hectare in 2002 from a guy who raised cattle and left the soil trampled and only two trees. Now everything looks green,” said Joelma, who has three children in their twenties and lives surrounded by relatives, including her father, 65, who was born and still lives in the community, Pedra Branca, part of Cumaru.

The couple later acquired two other farms, of two and four hectares in size, just a few hundred metres away, where they raise cows, sheep, goats and pigs. The production of cheese, butter and other dairy products are, along with honey, their main income-earners.

On the original farm they have an agro-ecological laboratory, where they also have chicken coops and a bathroom with a dry toilet, built on rocks, in order to use human faeces as fertiliser and to “save water”.

“We reuse 60 percent of the water we use in the kitchen and bathroom, which passes through the bio water (filtration system) before it is used for irrigation,” Joelma said, while reciting her almost endless list of sustainable farm practices.

Joelma (in the picture) next to a biodigester, one of 23 donated by Caritas Switzerland to Brazilian farmers. Joelma and Roberto Pereira are family farmers from Cumaru, in Brazil’s semi-arid Northeast. The biodigester uses manure from five cows to produce more than twice the amount of biogas consumed by the family. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

It all began many years ago, when her husband became a builder of rainwater collection tanks and she learned about the technologies promoted by the non-governmental Sabiá Agro-ecological Development Centre in the neighbouring municipality of Bom Jardim. Sabiá is the name of a bird and a tree that symbolise biodiversity.

Some tobacco seedlings stand out in a seedbed. “They serve as a natural insecticide, along with other plants with a strong odor,” she said.

“Joelma is an important model because she incorporated the agroforestry system and a set of values into her practices,” Alexandre Bezerra Pires, general coordinator of the Sabiá Centre, told the Central American farmers during the visit to her farm.

“The exchanges with Central America and Africa are a fantastic opportunity to boost cooperation, strengthen ties and help other countries. The idea of coexisting with the Semi-Arid (ASA’s motto) took the Central Americans by surprise,” he said.

The biodigester is the technology of “greatest interest for Guatemala, where they use a lot of firewood,” said Doris Chavarría, a FAO technician in that Central American country. She also noted the practices of making pulp from fruit that are not generally used because they are seasonal and diversifying techniques for preparing corn as interesting to adopt in her country.

“We don’t have enough resources, the government doesn’t help us, the only institution that supports us is FAO,” said Guatemalan farmer Gloria Diaz, after pointing out that Brazilian farmers have the support of various non-governmental organisations.

Mariana García from El Salvador was impressed by the “great diversity of vegetables” that the Brazilians grow and “the fairs 130 km away, an opportunity to sell at better prices, with the cost of transportation cut when several farmers go together.”

She was referring to family farmers in Bom Jardim who sell their produce in Recife, the capital of the state of Pernambuco, with a population of 1.6 million.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/07/agroecology-beats-land-water-scarcity-brazil/feed/0Community Work Among Women Improves Lives in Peru’s Andes Highlandshttp://www.ipsnews.net/2018/06/community-work-greenhouses-give-boost-women-families-perus-andes-highlands/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=community-work-greenhouses-give-boost-women-families-perus-andes-highlands
http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/06/community-work-greenhouses-give-boost-women-families-perus-andes-highlands/#respondSat, 30 Jun 2018 02:20:14 +0000Mariela Jarahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=156475At more than 3,300 m above sea level, in the department of Cuzco, women are beating infertile soil and frost to grow organic food and revive community work practices that date back to the days of the Inca empire in Peru such as the “ayni” and “minka”. “We grow maize, beans and potatoes, that’s what […]

In the community of Paropucjio, several women stand next to the solar greenhouse they have just built together on the plot of land belonging to one of them, in the district of Cusipata, more than 3,300 metres above sea level in the Cuzco highlands region in Peru. They get excited when they talk about how the greenhouses will improve their families' lives. Credit: Mariela Jara/IPS

By Mariela JaraCUSIPATA, Peru, Jun 30 2018 (IPS)

At more than 3,300 m above sea level, in the department of Cuzco, women are beating infertile soil and frost to grow organic food and revive community work practices that date back to the days of the Inca empire in Peru such as the “ayni” and “minka”.

“We grow maize, beans and potatoes, that’s what we eat, and we forget about other vegetables, but now we’re going to be able to naturally grow tomatoes, lettuce, and peas,” María Magdalena Condori told IPS, visibly pleased with the results, while showing her solar greenhouse, built recently in several days of community work.

She lives in the Andes highlands village of Paropucjio, located at more than 3,300 m above sea level, in Cusipata, a small district of less than 5,000 inhabitants."We want to help improve the quality of life of rural women by strengthening their capacities in agriculture. They work the land, they sow and harvest, they take care of their families, they are the mainstay of food security in their homes and their rights are not recognized." -- Elena Villanueva

The local population subsists on small-scale farming and animal husbandry, which is mainly done by women, while most of the men find paid work in districts in the area or even in the faraway city of Cuzco, to complete the family income.

The geographical location of Paropucjio is a factor in the low fertility of the soils, in addition to the cold, with temperatures that drop below freezing. “Here, frost can destroy all our crops overnight and we end up with no food to eat,” says Celia Mamani, one of Condori’s neighbors.

A similar or even worse situation can be found in the other 11 villages that make up Cusipata, most of which are at a higher altitude and are more isolated than Paropucjio, which is near the main population centre in Cusipata and has the largest number of families, about 120.

Climate change has exacerbated the harsh conditions facing women and their families in these rural areas, especially those who are furthest away from the towns, because they have fewer skills training opportunities to face the new challenges and have traditionally been neglected by public policy-makers.

“In Paropucjio there are 14 of us women who are going to have our own greenhouse and drip irrigation module; so far we have built five. This makes us very happy, we are proud of our work because we will be able to make better use of our land,” said Rosa Ysabel Mamani the day that IPS spent visiting the community.

The solar greenhouses will enable each of the beneficiaries to grow organic vegetables for their families and to sell the surplus production in the markets of Cusipata and nearby districts.

Women farmers from Paropucjio, in the district of Cusipata, more than 3,300 metres above sea level, smile as they talk about the wooden structure for a solar greenhouse, which they jokingly refer to as a “skeleton”. The roof will be made of a special microfilm resistant to bad weather, intense ultraviolet radiation and extreme temperatures, and the greenhouses are built collectively, in the Andean region of Cuzco, Peru. Credit: Mariela Jara/IPS

With a broad smile, Mamani points to a 50-sq-m wooden structure that within the next few days will be covered with mesh on the sides and microfilm – a plastic resistant to extreme temperatures and hail – on the roof.

“We will all come with our husbands and children and we will finish building the greenhouse in ‘ayni’ (a Quechua word that means cooperation and solidarity), as our ancestors used to work,” she explains.

The ayni is one of the social forms of work of the Incas still preserved in Peru’s Andes highlands, where the community comes together to build homes, plant, harvest or perform other tasks. At the end of the task, in return, a hearty meal is shared.

The minga, another legacy of the Inca period, is similar but between communities, whose inhabitants go to help those of another community. In this case women from different villages and hamlets get together to build the greenhouses, especially the roofs, the hardest part of the job.

Women farmers from the community of Huasao, in the Andean highlands region of Cuzco, Peru, stand in front of one of the 50-sq-m solar tents, which has a 750-litre water tank for the drip irrigation module for their vegetables. Credit: Mariela Jara/IPS

“We want to help improve the quality of life of rural women by strengthening their capacities in agriculture. They work the land, they sow and harvest, they take care of their families, they are the mainstay of food security in their homes and their rights are not recognised,” Elena Villanueva, a sociologist with the centre’s rural development programme, told IPS.

She said the aim was comprehensive training for women farmers, so that they can use agro-ecological techniques for the sustainable use of soil, water and seeds. They will also learn to defend their rights as women, farmers and citizens, in their homes, community spaces and before local authorities.

The expert said the solar greenhouses open up new opportunities for women because they protect crops from adverse weather and from the high levels of ultraviolet radiation in the area, allowing the women to grow crops that could not survive out in the open.

“Now they will have year-round food that is not currently part of their diet, such as cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes and lettuce, that will enrich the nutrition and diets in their families – crops they will be able to plant and harvest with greater security,” she said.

The women have also been trained in the preparation of natural fertilisers and pesticides. “Our soils don’t yield much, they squeeze the roots of the plants, so we have to prepare them very well so that they can receive the seeds and then provide good harvests,” Condori explains.

In the 50 square metres covered by her new greenhouse, the local residents have worked steadily digging the soil to remove the stones, turn the soil and form the seed beds for planting.

Women and men from the community of Paropucjio, in Peru’s Andes highlands region of Cuzco, share lunch after completing the community work of building one of 80 small greenhouses, where women farmers will be able to grow organic vegetables despite the extreme temperatures in the area. Credit: Mariela Jara/IPS

“To do that we have had to fertilise a lot using bocashi (fermented organic fertiliser) that we prepare in groups with the other women, working together in ayni. We brought guinea pig and chicken droppings and cattle manure, leaves, and ground eggshells,” she explains.

This active role in making decisions about the use of their productive resources has helped change the way their husbands see them and has brought a new appreciation for everything they do to support the household and their families.

Honorato Ninantay, from the community of Huasao, located more than 3,100 metres above sea level in the neighbouring district of Oropesa, confesses his surprise and admiration for the way his wife juggles all her responsibilities.

“It seems unbelievable that before, in all this time, I hadn’t noticed. Only when she has gone to the workshops and has been away from home for two days have I understood,” he says.

“I as a man have only one job, I work in construction. But my wife has aahh! (long exclamation). When she left I had to fetch the water, cook the meals, feed the animals, go to the farm and take care of my mother who is sick and lives with us. I couldn’t handle it all,” he adds.

His wife, Josefina Corihuamán, listens to her husband with a smile on her face, and confirms that he is now involved in household chores because he has understood that washing, cleaning and cooking are not just a “woman’s job.”

She also has a solar greenhouse and irrigation module and is confident that she will produce enough to feed her family and sell the surplus in the local market.

“What we will harvest will be healthy, organic, chemical-free food, and that is good for our families, for our children. I feel that I will finally make good use of my land,” she says.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/06/community-work-greenhouses-give-boost-women-families-perus-andes-highlands/feed/0Farmers from Central America and Brazil Join Forces to Live with Droughthttp://www.ipsnews.net/2018/06/farmers-central-america-brazil-join-forces-live-drought/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=farmers-central-america-brazil-join-forces-live-drought
http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/06/farmers-central-america-brazil-join-forces-live-drought/#commentsThu, 14 Jun 2018 02:49:55 +0000Edgardo Ayalahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=156228Having a seven-litre container with a filter on the dining room table that purifies the collected rainwater, and opening a small valve to fill a cup and quench thirst, is almost revolutionry for Salvadoran peasant farmer Víctor de León. As if that weren’t enough, having a pond dug in the ground, a reservoir of rainwater […]

After a day working on the land where he grows corn and beans, Víctor de León serves himself freshly purified water, one of the benefits of the climate change adaptation project in the Central American Dry Corridor region, La Colmena village, in the municipality of Candelaria de la Frontera, in the western department of Santa Ana, El Salvador. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Having a seven-litre container with a filter on the dining room table that purifies the collected rainwater, and opening a small valve to fill a cup and quench thirst, is almost revolutionry for Salvadoran peasant farmer Víctor de León.

As if that weren’t enough, having a pond dug in the ground, a reservoir of rainwater collected to ensure that livestock survive periods of drought, is also unprecedented in La Colmena, a village in the rural municipality of Candelaria de la Frontera, in the western department of Santa Ana.

“All our lives we’ve been going to rivers or springs to get water, and now it’s a great thing to have it always within reach,” De León, 63, told IPS while carrying forage to one of his calves.

De León grows staple grains and produces milk with a herd of 13 cows.

This region of El Salvador, located in the so-called Dry Corridor of Central America, has suffered for years the effects of extreme weather: droughts and excessive rainfall that have ruined several times the maize and bean crops, the country’s two main agricultural products and local staple foods.

There has also been a shortage of drinking water for people and livestock.

But now the 13 families of La Colmena and others in the municipality of Metapán, also in Santa Ana, are adapting to climate change.

They have learned about sustainable water and soil management through a project that has combined the efforts of international aid, the government, the municipalities involved and local communities.

The 7.9 million dollar project is funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), with the support of several ministries and municipal governments.

Sharing experiences

The work in the local communities, which began in September 2014, is already producing positive results, which led to the May visit by a group of 13 Brazilian farmers, six of them women, who also live in a water-scarce region.

The objective was to exchange experiences and learn how the Salvadorans have dealt with drought and climatic effects on crops.

“It was very interesting to learn about what they are doing there, how they are coping with the water shortage, and we told them what we are doing here,” Pedro Ramos, a 36-year-old farmer from El Salvador, told IPS.

Ofelia Chávez shows some of the chicks given to the families of the village of La Colmena, in the municipality of Candelaria de la Frontera, Santa Ana department, El Salvador, to promote poultry farming in this rural village. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

The visit was organised by the Networking in Brazil’s Semi-Arid Region (ASA), a network of 3,000 farmers and social organisations of this ecoregion of Northeast Brazil, the country’s driest region. Now, six Salvadoran peasants will travel to learn about their experience between Jun. 26-30.

“The Brazilians told us that there was a year when total rains amounted to only what the families in the area consume in a day, practically nothing,” Ramos continued.

The Brazilian delegation learned about the project that FAO is carrying out in the area and visited similar initiatives in the municipality of Chiquimula, in the department of the same name, in the east of neighbouring Guatemala.

“These Brazilian farmers have a lot of experience in this field, they are very organised, their motto is not to fight drought but to learn to live with it,” said Vera Boerger, a land and water officer of FAO’s Subregional Office for Mesoamerica.

Brazilians, she added in an interview with IPS from Panama City, have it harder than Central Americans: in the Dry Corridor it rains between 600 and 1,000 mm a year, while in Brazil’s semi-arid Northeast it only rains between 300 and 600 mm, “when it feels like raining.”

Life in La Colmena is precarious, without access to electricity and piped water, among other challenges.

According to official figures, El Salvador’s 95.5 percent of the urban population had piped water in 2017 compared to 76.5 percent in rural areas. Poverty in the cities stands at 33 percent, while in the countryside the poverty rate is 53.3 percent.

In La Colmena, Brazilian farmers were able to see up close the two reservoirs built in the village to collect rainwater.

They are rectangular ponds dug into the ground, 2.5 m deep, 20 m long and 14 m wide, covered by a polyethylene membrane that prevents filtration and retains the water. Their capacity is 500,000 litres.

They have started to fill up, IPS noted, as the rainy season, from May to October, has just begun. The water will be mainly used for cattle and family gardens.

(L to R) Pedro Ramos, Víctor de León, Ofelia Chávez and Daniel Santos, in front of one of the two rainwater reservoirs built in their village, La Colmena, in the Salvadoran municipality of Candelaria de la Frontera. The pond is part of the benefits of a climate change adaptation project implemented by FAO. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Ofelia Chávez, 63, raises livestock on her 11.5 hectares of land. With 19 cows and calves, she is one of those who has benefited the most from the reservoir built on her property, although the water is shared with the community.

“I used to go down to the river with my cattle, and it was exhausting, and I got worried in the summer when the water was scarce,” she told IPS, next to the other pond on the De León farm, along with several enthusiastic neighbours who watched the level of water rise every day as it rained.

“Experts tell us that we can even raise tilapia here,” Ramos said, referring to the possibility of boosting the community’s income with fish farming.

He added that the Brazilians told them that the reservoirs in their country are built with cement instead of polyethylene membranes. But he believes that in El Salvador that system probably won’t work because the soil is brittle and the cement will eventually crack.

“It is possible to use (this design with polyethylene membrane) in some places of the semi-arid region, we can experiment with it here,” said one of the Brazilians who visited the country, Raimundo Nonado Patricio, 54, who lives in a rural community in Tururu, a municipality in the state of Ceará.

For the farmers in the Dry Corridor, he told IPS in an interview by phone from Rio de Janeiro, it is a useful experience “to see our crop diversity and our rainwater harvesting systems.”

In the two Central American countries visited, production is concentrated “in two or three crops, mainly maize,” he said, while in Brazil’s semi-arid region dozens of vegetables, fruits and grains are grown, and several species of animals are raised, even on small plots of land.

In total, the Salvadoran project financed by the GEF built eight reservoirs of a similar size.

Each beneficiary family also received two 5,000-litre tanks to collect rainwater made of polyethylene resin, so they can store up to 10,000 litres. Once purified with the filter they were provided, the water is fit for human consumption.

“My wife tells me that now she sees the difference. We are grateful, because before we had to walk for more than an hour along paths and hills to a spring,” said Daniel Santos, a 37-year-old farmer who grows grains.

In addition, in the beneficiary communities, living fences were erected with grass, and other fences with stones, on sloping ground, to prevent erosion and facilitate water infiltration, an effort aimed at preserving water resources.

Furthermore, 300,000 fruit and forestry trees, as well as seeds to plant grass, were distributed to increase plant cover.

María de Fátima Santos, 29, who lives in a rural community in Fatima, in the northeast Brazilian state of Bahía, told IPS that of the experiences she learned about in El Salvador and Guatemala, the most useful one was “the use of the drinking water filter, which is common, similar to that in Brazil, but which is less appreciated here.”

For their part, their Central American counterparts, she said, could adopt the “economic garden”, which consists of a large hole in the ground, with a canvas or plastic cloth, which is covered with ploughed soil and buried pipes provide underground drip irrigation.

]]>http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/06/farmers-central-america-brazil-join-forces-live-drought/feed/1Optimal Use of Water Works Miracles in Brazil’s Semi-Arid Regionhttp://www.ipsnews.net/2018/05/optimal-use-water-works-miracles-brazils-semi-arid-region/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=optimal-use-water-works-miracles-brazils-semi-arid-region
http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/05/optimal-use-water-works-miracles-brazils-semi-arid-region/#respondTue, 08 May 2018 15:49:14 +0000Mario Osavahttp://www.ipsnews.net/?p=155678Cattle ranching has been severely affected by drought in Brazi’s Northeast region, but it has not only survived but has made a comeback in the Jacuípe river basin thanks to an optimal use of water. José Antonio Borges, who owns 98 hectares of land and 30 cows in Ipirá, one of the 14 municipalities in […]

José Antonio Borges is surrounded by the forage cactus, ready to be harvested, that he planted on his farm. It is the basis of the diet of their 30 cows, which allows them to produce 400 litres of milk per day, using an automatic milking system twice a day, in Ipirá, in the Jacuípe basin, in Brazil’s northeastern semi-arid ecoregion, where the optimal use of water is transforming family farms. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

By Mario OsavaIPIRÁ-PINTADAS, Brazil, May 8 2018 (IPS)

Cattle ranching has been severely affected by drought in Brazi’s Northeast region, but it has not only survived but has made a comeback in the Jacuípe river basin thanks to an optimal use of water.

José Antonio Borges, who owns 98 hectares of land and 30 cows in Ipirá, one of the 14 municipalities in the basin, in the northeastern state of Bahia, almost tripled his milk production over the last two years, up to 400 litres per day, without increasing his herd.

To achieve this, he was assisted by technicians from Adapta Sertão, a project promoted by a coalition of organisations under the coordination of the Human Development Network (Redeh), based in Rio de Janeiro.

“If I wake up and I don’t hear the cows mooing, I cannot live,” said Borges to emphasise his vocation that prevented him from abandoning cattle farming in the worst moments of the drought which in the last six years lashed the semi-arid ecoregion, an area of low rainfall in the interior of the Brazilian Northeast.

But his wife, Eliete Brandão Borges, did give up and moved to Ipirá, the capital city of the municipality, where she works as a seamstress. Their 13-year-old son lives in town with her, in order to study. But he does not rule out returning to the farm, “if a good project comes up, like raising chickens.”

Borges, who “feels overwhelmed after a few hours in the city,” points out as factors for the increased dairy productivity the forage cactus (Opuntia ficus-indica Mill), a species from Mexico, which he uses as a food supplement for the cattle, and the second daily milking.

“The neighbours called me crazy for planting the cactus in an intensive way,” he said. “We used to use it, but we planted it more spread out.” Today, at the age of 39, Borges is an example to be followed and receives visits from other farmers interested in learning about how he has increased his productivity.

Normaleide de Oliveira stands in front of the pond on her farm that did not even run out of water during the six years of drought suffered by Brazil’s Northeast region. Water availability is an advantage of family farmers in the Jacuípe river basin, compared to other areas of the country’s semi-arid ecoregion. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

He started after being taken to visit another property that used intensive planting, in an effort to convince him, said Jocivaldo Bastos, the Adapta Sertão technician who advised him. “Actually I don’t use cacti,” Borges acknowledged when he learned about the innovative tecnique.

The thornless, drought-resistant cactus became a lifesaving source of forage for livestock during drought, and is an efficient way to store water during the dry season in the Sertão, the popular name for the driest area in the Northeast, which also covers other areas of the sparsely populated and inhospitable interior of Brazil.

Also extending through the semi-arid region is the construction of concrete tanks designed to capture rainwater, which cost 12,000 reais (3,400 dollars) and can store up to 70,000 litres a year. With this money, 0.4 hectares of cactus can be planted, equivalent to 121,000 litres of water a year, according to a study by Adapta Sertão.

But that requires attention to the details, such as fertilisers, drip irrigation, clearing brush and selecting seedlings. Borges “lost everything” from his first intensive planting of the Opuntia forage cactus.

Parched, hard-packed land without vegetation is now green and fertile thanks to farmer and livestock breeder José Antonio Borges, who regenerated the land, supported by technicians from Adapta Sertão. It is now what he refers to as “the forest” where he grows watermelons and fruit trees, in Brazil’s semi-arid Northeast. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Then he received advice from agricultural technician Bastos and currently has three hectares of cactus plantations and plans to expand.

At the beginning, he was frightened by the need to increase investments, previously limited to 500 Brazilian reais (142 dollars) per month. Now he spends twelve times more, but he earns gross revenues of 13,000 reais (3,700 dollars), according to Bastos.

The second milking, in the afternoon, was also key for Normaleide de Oliveira, a 55-year-old widow, to almost double her milk production. Today it reaches between 150 and 200 liters a day with only 12 dairy cows, on her farm located 12 km from Pintadas, the city in the centre of the Jacuípe basin.

“It is the milk that provides the income I live on,” said the farmer, who owns 30 more cattle. “I used to have 60 in total, but I sold some because of the drought, which almost made me give it all up,” she said.

The Jacuípe basin is seen as privileged compared to other parts of the semi-arid Northeast. The rivers have dried up, but in the drilled wells there is abundant water that, when pumped, irrigates the crops and drinking troughs.

This concrete tank is being built on a large rock on the farm of Normaleide de Oliveira, in the municipality of Pintadas, to be used for fish farming. Stones were used to make the walls using cement, on top of a rock in order to facilitate irrigation by gravity, in an example of agricultural development that optimises the use of the scarce water in the Sertão eco-region in Northeastern Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Oliveira has the advantage of having two natural ponds on her property, one of which never completely dried up during the six years of drought.

Now she is building a concrete tank on a large rock near her house that she will devote to raising fish and irrigating her gardens. Its location up on a rock will allow gravity-fed irrigation for the watermelon, squash and vegetables that Oliveira, who lives with her daughter and son-in-law, plans to grow.

The pond was proposed by Jorge Nava, an expert in permaculture who has been working with Adapta Sertão since last year, contributing new techniques to optimise the use of available water.

Adapta Sertão’s aims are to diversify production and strengthen conservation, and incorporate sustainability and adaptability to climate change in family farming.

In Ipirá, Borges has a pond one metre deep and six metres in diameter, with 23,000 litres of water, surrounded by his cilantro crop. In the pond he raises 1,000 tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus), a species increasingly popular in fish farming.

Nearby is what he calls “the forest” – several dozen fruit trees on sloping ground with contour furrows, where he already used to plant watermelons using drip irrigation, which now coexist with the new project.

José Antonio Borges’ family members enjoy themselves in the 23,000-litre concrete pond built on his farm to irrigate the orchards and raise fish, taking advantage of the water in boreholes drilled on his land in Ipirá , in the semi-arid region of Northeastern Brazil. Credit: Courtesy of Jorge Nava.

“In 70 days he harvested 260 watermelons” and soil that was so dried up and hardened that the tractor had to plow several times, by thin layers each time, is now covered in vegetation, said Nava. “In 40 days the dry land became green,” he stated.

Contour furrows contain the water runoff and moisten the soil evenly. If the furrows were sloping they would flood the lower part, leaving the top dry, which would ruin the irrigation, the expert in permaculture explained.

This “forest” will fulfill the function of providing fruit and regenerating the landscape as well as making better use of water, boosting soil infiltration and acting as a barrier to the wind which increases evaporation, he said.

These are small gestures of respect for natural laws, to avoid waste and to multiply the water by reusing it, making it possible to live well on small farms with less water, he said.

In critical situations it is only about keeping plants alive with millilitres of water, until the next rain ensures production, as in the case of Borges’ watermelons.

Nava attributes his mission and dedication to seeking solutions in accordance with local conditions and demands to what happened to his family, who migrated from the southern tip of Brazil to Apuí, deep in the Amazon rainforest, in 1981, when he was three years old.

To go to school sometimes he had to travel nine days from his home, through the jungle. He became aware of the risk of desertification in the Amazon. The shallow-rooted forests are highly vulnerable to drought and deforestation, he learned.